Making as if…

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas, Intel presented a number of “concept devices” demonstrating technologies that can be integrated into other manufacturers’ products. Among the products on display were wearable computing devices – Bluetooth headphones that included a personal digital assistant called Jarvis, similar to Apple’s Siri, and headphones that monitor your heart rate.

But a few days following this impressive demonstration by CEO Brian Krzanich, it turned out that the change from Intel’s old slogan, “Intel Inside,” later been replaced by “Look Inside” was prescient – inside the devices were actually processors made by other companies, not Intel. In at least one instance, that of the headphones that monitor your heart rate, it was a processor from ARM – whose designs compete with Intel’s in the mobile device market.

At Intel’s annual press conference, I asked Muli Adan, CEO of Intel Israel, about it. Initially Adan claimed that he was not aware of which products were involved (a claim that I strongly doubt), and finally he replied that “sometimes you purchase technology and you don’t have time to transfer it,” and suggested the possibility that these products would, in the future, work on Intel processors (if so, why are they being demonstrated now as Intel’s concept devices?) – but his responses did not really satisfy me.

This is not the first time that technology companies “prettify” the abilities of their products for the benefit of a demo. In September 2012, Nokia demonstrated its new flagship phone, the Lumia 920, which included image stabilization capabilities that had not yet been seen in cell phones. But they were caught out:

In a video clip that supposedly had been shot using the device, and which was meant to compare its image stabilization capabilities with those of competing products, viewers could actually see a reflection of the real video recording device – a much better camera, installed in a video van…

Nokia apologized, and attempted to fix the damage by issuing a video that this time had been filmed using the Lumia 920; but the harm had already been done. In Intel’s case, they tried to minimize the importance of the matter, as shown by the responses mentioned above.

Why do companies do this? Pressure. The big exhibitions are a major opportunity for the major companies to wow an audience of journalists and analysts who come to see the company’s people pulling rabbits out of hats. Just like elections for high office, it’s a case of sink or swim, and no holds barred. Even if it comes to “improving” on the reality of our new devices’ content and capabilities…